Stephen J. Collier (University of California, Berkeley)
Date Tue, 23 June 2026, 6:15 pm
Location PEG 2.G107, Westend Campus

The governance of climate change has long been approached on a particular model of futurity: a particular way in which futures are brought into—and unfolded in—the present. Whether through the IPCC-UNFCCC framework or local adaptation planning, techniques of anticipation constitute future climate change as an object of knowledge so that planners and other decision-makers can take adaptive or mitigative action in the present. It has become increasingly apparent, however, that this model of anticipation has not lived up to the hopes invested in it. On the one hand, with repeated failure to meet emission reduction targets, discussion has turned to the “ungovernability” of climate change. On the other hand, in many cases “climate futures” are unfolding through the effects of climate fueled disasters as these ramify through social, political, and economic systems. Drawing on research into wildfires and insurance in California, this talk explores two contrasting toolkits for studying the fixing of climate futures beyond anticipation: a pragmatist risk sociology and systems-theoretic perspectives on the “irrationalization” of disaster policy.

Stephen J. Collier is Professor of City and Regional Planning at the University of California, Berkeley. He is author of Post-Soviet Social (Princeton, 2011) and The Government of Emergency (Princeton, 2011). His current research examines urban climate adaptation, with a particular focus on insurance and other financial mechanisms.